This invention relates generally to ultrasound imaging, and more particularly to cardiac imaging of the left ventricle.
Cardiac diagnosis is often made based on two-dimensional (2D) gray scale echo scans of the left ventricle. For example, strain computations depend on spatially smoothing the raw velocity data and limiting the computations to the myocardial territory (i.e. the heart's muscle wall). Error will generally be introduced if the myocardial borders extend to the blood pool or to the pericardial regions. The myocardial borders may be defined as the outer surface, or epicardium, and the inner surface, or endocardium, of the left ventricle. Therefore, a good estimate of the actual borders is important. The borders may be outlined manually. However, this is tedious, time consuming, and relatively subjective and user-dependent.
In order for the system to automatically calculate the myocardial borders, the user needs to identify three points in the left ventricle, the apical point and the left and right basal points. If the user places one or more of the points at an incorrect location, the results may be inconsistent and/or incorrect.